Joly Tue very full and frank discussion to-day on the subject of the proposed naval base at Singapore is having the-result of educating lay opinion as nothing else would do. Incidentally the Singapore base is only part of a much wider subject under consideration by several countries, that of naval preparedness, and the further these discussions proceed the clearer view do we get of the world position and the stronger appears the need for the base. In spite of all that has happened since the war—the naval conference at Washington and the League of Nations—the Powers are concerning themselves with what some of them call "'the imaginary enemy,"? a phrase which but thinly veils allusions to one another, and it steadily becom more evident that if naval limitation has eased the burden on the taxpayer, it has not altered the outlook of those responsible for national defence. These latter must go on making their appreciations of the international situation, and today they agree that the danger zone of the world has been transferred from Europe to the Pacific. We need not concern ourselves here with the causes for this, but it will be obvious that as soon as such a conclusion is established Great Britain's interests in the Pacific demand a degree of preparedness there which was not necessitated in former years.
Living as we do in amity among our neighbours here, there are many circumstances in which it would be wrong and productive of anything but good to get behind the veil comprised in the "imaginary enemy,'' but as it happens that everybody concerned has now thrown off any concealment we are perfectly free to discuss the strategical elements which have made. the Singapore base a necessity. While we see nothing on the horizon to d'vturb the prevalent calm, others at longer distance apparently do, and their frankness in discussion gives others full liberty for the expression of opinion. Actually, if the "imaginary enemy'' fails to be specified, the case for the base. disappears. It will be within the memory of our readers that Great Britain has fought naval actions in the Pacific without such a base, but in modern war-
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